People’s Light & Theatre Company, in association with The Gravity Project, presents the World Premiere of CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD, written by Russell Davis, and based on the children’s novel by Avi. It runs from January 17 – February 24, 2008, on the Steinbright Stage. Andy Belser directs with original music by John Nuhn. People’s Light & Theatre is located at 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern. For tickets call 610.644.3500 or visit www.peopleslight.org. PECO is the show’s corporate sponsor and TARGET is the Family Discovery Series sponsor.

CRISPIN: THE CROSS OF LEAD is author Avi’s 50th book and is a Newbery Medal winner. It is being adapted by People’s Light Resident Playwright, Russell Davis, as part of the Adaptation Project, an NEA-funded program that brings award-winning children’s literature to the stage.

Davis says, “I did not know about CRISPIN until my agent asked me to read it. Her 11 year-old son loved the book and she knew we could get the rights. I immediately realized that I liked the medieval world it creates, and I also liked the character of Bear very much because he is a juggler.” Mr. Davis has been a juggling and unicycling instructor for the Big Apple Circus' Circus Arts in Education program, and led circus workshops at various theatres, universities, and schools.

Avi gave his permission to move forward with the adaptation and also approved the first draft of Mr. Davis’s script. Davis adds, “I am a playwright myself, but in this instance, I felt that it was my job to be true to the book. I did my best to bring the story to life without making any radical changes. It takes a whole different set of skills, and that made this project both interesting and challenging.”

Andy Belser is the director of CRISPIN and also the founder and Artistic Director of The Gravity Project and Director of the Juniata Theatre Conservatory. The Gravity Project is a multi–disciplinary, movement-based ensemble of artists based out of the Juniata College Theatre. Many of the cast members are also ensemble members for The Gravity Project. Mr. Belser directed other Davis works including The Second Death of Priscilla and The Wild Goose Circus.

Says Davis, “Andy knocked my socks off with his production of The Wild Goose Circus. He created a brilliant production with few resources. I recommended him to People’s Light and they hired him to direct CRISPIN. I think Andy will make a lot of the right choices given all of the juggling and movement that are in the script.”

The character of Bear is played by People’s Light company member Christopher Patrick Mullen. Russell has been working with him on his juggling skills for about a year. “Chris is a very talented juggler,” says Davis. “For a long time we were looking for a juggler who can act. With Chris, you have an excellent actor who has been trained to become an excellent juggler. I think he is very adept and will make a great Bear.”

CRISPIN previews on Thursday, January 17th at 7pm. The show opens on Friday, January 18th at 7pm and runs through February 24, 2008. Tickets are now on sale and cost $20 for children and $28 for adults, with special discounts available for groups of 10 or more. Audiences are encouraged to join the artists after each performance to discuss the production.

Subscriptions to the 2007/2008 Season are still available at a significant savings. Remaining shows in the 6-Play Series include: The Glass Menagerie (February 13 – March 22, 2008), I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady From Rwanda (May 28 – June 22, 2008), and Sherlock Holmes & The Case of the Jersey Lily (June 18 – July 13, 2008). The remaining show in the TARGET Family Discovery Series is Getting Near to Baby (March 27 – April 20, 2008). For information, tickets, and subscriptions, please call the box office at 610.644.3500 or visit www.peopleslight.org.

Special performances and discounts, in addition to discount meal packages and talk-backs with the artists are available for groups of 10 or more. For more information or to purchase group tickets, call 610.647.1900, ext. 134 or email group@peopleslight.org.

KEY BIOS

Russell Davis (Playwright) has written numerous plays, including Appointment with a High Wire Lady, The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker, The Day of the Picnic, The Second Death of Priscilla, The Song of Grendelyn, and Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name. They have been produced at various theatres throughout the country, including People's Light & Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Center Stage, Yale Repertory, and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival. They have also been presented at the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, Sundance Insti¬tute Playwrights Lab, National Playwrights Conference, PlayPenn, and the New Harmony Project. The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker won a Drama-logue Critics Award in Califor¬nia for best play in 1987. His new play, Cecilia's Last Tea Party, will be produced at Passage Theatre Company in May 2008. He was resident playwright at People's Light for the Theatre Residency Program of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communi¬cations Group. He has received grants and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, New York Founda¬tion for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and Tennessee Arts Commission. He is a past member of New Dramatists in New York. He has been an artist-in-residence at institutions such as Lehigh University, Virginia Tech, University of Utah, University of Puget Sound, and Juniata College. He is also a juggler and performed in People's Light's production of The Thoughts & Travels of Nicki. He directed Tony Duncan who won the juggling championships at the 1994 International Jugglers' Association Convention, and worked with the juggler Michael Moschen in Michael Moschen in Motion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 1988 Next Wave Festival and at the Lincoln Center's SERIOUS FUN! Festival 1990. He has been a juggling/unicycling instructor for the Big Apple Circus' Circus Arts in Education program, and led circus workshops at various theatres, universities, and schools. He and Paul Meshejian worked in collaboration with Jon Held, a juggler and former member of Airjazz, to develop Jon Held's solo performance piece Tales of Lunacy which was produced by Touchstone Theatre.

Avi (Author) is an award-winning writer of books for youth, including historical novels, comedies, animal tales, adventures, fantasies, and ghost stories. His novel Crispin: The Cross of Lead was the Newbery Medal winner in 2003. He is also the author of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Nothing But The Truth, and most recently The Book Without Words, and Strange Happenings. He was born in 1937 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He began by writing plays, but wrote children’s books after his own children were born. In an interview posted on his website, he said his twin sister gave him his name when they were about a year old. He doesn’t use a last name.

Andy Belser (Director) is Artistic Director of The Gravity Project and Director of the Juniata Theatre Conservatory. Recent theatrical creations include: enrico4, a jazz-infused, fashion/runway event inspired by Pirandello’s Henry IV; Nine Gates, a movement meditation of contemporary poetry based on poet Jane Hirshfield’s book of essays Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry; Standing Stone, a puppet/movement piece about a sense of place; HE, a clown-filled, multi-language tango tragedy; The Body of Mystery, a movement landscape of Judeo-Christian myth; Songs and Lives, a music/performance piece featuring the live playing by The Audubon Quartet; and The Sympathetic Weight of Bones, a meditation on love co-conceived with Whit MacLaughlin. Among his directing work on scripts are the premieres of Russell Davis’s The Second Death of Priscilla and The Wild Goose Circus, Leslie Lee’s The Ninth Wave, and John Mighton’s The Little Years. Other recent productions have included adaptations of Spring’s Awakening, He Who Gets Slapped, Exit the King, and The Firebugs. Belser’s career as a director and teacher has focused on diverse movement forms and interdisciplinary approaches to theatre, which have led him to partner with artistic visionaries in the founding of The Gravity Project, a theatre company and a center for performance research. Mr. Belser is the 2003 Recipient of the Carnegie Pennsylvania Professor of the Year Award.

John Nuhn (Composer/Sound Designer) John Nuhn earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1988. Since 1981 Nuhn has played bass on numerous stages throughout the United States and Europe, including a one-year stint with the only Tommy Dorsey Orchestra ghost band led by Dorsey original, Buddy Morrow. Nuhn’s recordings include two CDs of original material and playing bass with the incomparable Yusef Lateef on his Atlantic Records release, Concerto for Yusef Lateef. In 1991 Nuhn composed a theater score for director Andrew Belser, which began a succession of theater collaborations, including a world premier performance of Wild Goose Circus by playwright Russell Davis.

Josh Beckel (Cerdic/Ensemble) is making his first appearance at People's Light & Theatre Company. Originally from Hollidaysburg, he is an actor and a dancer. Josh appeared in the workshop production of Crispin at Juniata College and is very excited to be working on the piece again. He has performed with Altoona Community Theatre, Allegheny Ballet Company, Cresson Lake Playhouse, and of course Juniata Theatre. Josh has been training with The Gravity Project for three years and is currently a Junior at Juniata College, where he is attaining his BA in Performing Arts and Mathematics.

Erin Brueggemann (Crispin) is making her debut at People's Light. She was last seen playing Squeaky Fromme in The Arden's production of Assassins. She also performed the role of Annelle in Steel Magnolias alongside Sandy Duncan at the Helen Hayes Perfoming Arts Center. A California native and an NYU graduate, she now resides in NYC where she can be found singing in the Brooklyn whackabilly band, The DEFiBULATORs.

Kathleen Lisa Clarke (Widow Daventry/Ensemble) is a New York based singer, actress and teacher. A graduate of Oberlin College (BA), and The University of Washington (MFA), she has been seen on both small and regional stages in New York, Seattle, Edinburgh, Denver, San Francisco, Cleveland, Jacksonville, New Orleans and Moscow, ID. TV: Northern Exposure, Medicine Ball, Third Watch, Hope and Faith. Film: Crocodile Tears, Angel Street, Music and Lyrics, My Sassy Girl. Kate has taught acting, movement and voice at Oberlin Theater Institute, the University of Washington, Tulane University, CUNY Hunter College and Juniata College. She is a member of the professional ensemble at The Gravity Project—a theater company based in Huntingdon, PA. In New York she has worked with the SITI Company, SOHO Rep, 78th Street Theater Lab and NADA, and has been a collaborator at BMI, a laboratory for new work in musical theater. With the Gravity Project, Kate appeared as Donna Matilda in an adaptation of Pirandello’s enrico4, and as the Mouth in Beckett’s Not I. Most recently, she directed Pippin at Juniata College.

Nathan Dryden (Priest/Ensemble) is a performing artist, choreographer, teacher, and member of The Gravity Project, currently living in Seattle, WA, where he teaches dance, aerial dance, improvisation, and the Skinner Releasing Technique. Nathan holds a BA in art and film studies from U.C. Irvine where he began exploring performance art and dance. In the last year Nathan co-created airstonewater with Erica Kauffman—an evening-length work of aerial dance and movement theatre for the Juniata College Theatre Department, performed with Stephanie Skura at the Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation, created works and performed with the NEW ARTiculations and ZUZI! dance companies in Tucson AZ, taught at the SRT summer intensives in Seattle, and traveled overseas to teach and perform in New Zealand, England, and Turkey. Most recently he premiered a new aerial solo on the triangular trapeze as a guest artist with Moving Current in Tampa, FL.

Michael Lopez (Father Quinel/John Ball/Ensemble) earned his MFA in Acting from the University of Washington. In August, he played Sal in the US premiere of Douglas Maxwell’s Helmet in New York and then reprised the role in a production at the University of Massachusetts. Michael has developed roles in and participated in the creation of the following original works in New York: Chung Ling Soo in The Mystery of Chung Ling Soo with Flying Carpet Theatre, a show which won “best out of town play 2005” in Atlanta and then garnered international acclaim when it performed to sold out houses at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; Richard Nixon in Nixons in Purgatory, by Bernadette Flagler; and Michael in Phenomenon at HERE Arts Center. Michael also had the opportunity to teach 7th and 8th Grade Science at the Trinity School in New York these past three months.

Christopher Patrick Mullen (Bear) is a graduate of DeSales University and a member of the Resident Ensemble of Artists here at PLTC, where he has appeared in Splittin’ the Raft, Twelfth Night, Robin Hood, The Crucible, Jack & the Beanstalk, The Miser, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest, among other productions. Regional credits include: As You Like It, Around the World in 80 Days, The Imaginary Invalid, Hamlet, Richard III, The Glass Menagerie, Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, and Charlie’s Aunt (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival), Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hamlet, Taming of the Shrew, Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival). Other regional and NY credits include: The Pavilion, Hedda Gabler, The Stinky Cheese Man, Much Ado about Nothing, Hyde in the Shadows, The Seven Year Itch, and Doughboy. On television, he has played a couple of bad guys on NBC’s Law & Order. Chris is a founding co-artistic director of QUINNOPOLIS, NY, a New York City based theatre company (www.quinnopolis.org).

Stephen Novelli (John Aycliffe) was seen recently in Six Characters in Search of an Author, Humble Boy, The Giver, The Imaginary Invalid, The Crucible, Jack & the Beanstalk and The Member of the Wedding, and is an Associate Artistic Director at PLTC. He has directed Tuesdays with Morrie, POPS and The Mourning Show for 30FEST, Camping with Henry and Tom, The Hope Zone, As You Like It, Measure for Measure and Glengarry Glen Ross, among others. A member of the resident company since 1974, he has performed in many productions, including 30FEST, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Around the World in 80 Days, Born Yesterday, Julius Caesar, Arthur’s Stone, Merlin’s Fire, Midons – or The Object of Desire, The Little Foxes, The Little Prince, all 3 versions of A Christmas Carol, The Merchant of Venice, Sacco and Vanzetti: A Vaudeville, Sign of the Lizard, The Playboy of the Western World, Sister Carrie, Hamlet, Tartuffe, The Tempest, and Have It Your Way.

Julianna Zinkel (Goodwife Peregrine/One-EyedMan/Ensemble) has been seen in People's Light productions Theophilus North, The Crucible, The Member of the Wedding, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Miser. She has also performed at The Wilma Theater in Big Love and Wintertime, The Arden Theatre in As You Like It, The Stinky Cheese Man, and Crime and Punishment, and with Brat Productions in the one-woman show written by Madi DiStefano, Honeypot: Estro-Jen. She explores meaning in movement with Workshop for Potential Movement, The Moss Play, and Cult 12, Fridge Fest: Diva Divan . For the past three years she has participated in the highly respected playwriting conference PlayPenn, headed by PLTC company member Paul Meshejian, in such plays as Scarcity by Lucy Thurber and There or Here by Jennifer Maisel.